SOURCE: Scally, Thomas. “Origin and Authority: An Analysis of the Relation between Anonymity and Authorship in Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest.” Dalhousie Review 62, no. 3 (autumn 1982): 355-73.

In the following essay, Scally analyzes Chief Bromden's narration in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest in terms of the truth of its meaning rather than the facts of its events.

I. Abstraction

It is at least curious that an inquiry should take the beginning as its end, the display of the origin as its purpose. This already suggests that one cannot begin at the beginning but rather only achieves the beginning as a sort of atmosphere radiated by the maturity of those concerns which, in their primitive incompleteness, generated the need for the beginning in the first place. To the extent that any inquiry is an act of separation from its origin, it will necessarily seek that origin beyond...